Life after snowball: The oldest complex Ediacaran fossils

AUTHOR(S)

Narbonne, Guy M.; Gehling, James G.

PUB. DATE

January 2003

SOURCE

Geology;Jan2003, Vol. 31 Issue 1, p27

SOURCE TYPE

Academic Journal

DOC. TYPE

Article

ABSTRACT

Newly discovered fronds of the Ediacaran index fossil Charnia from the Drook Formation of southeastern Newfoundland are the oldest large, architecturally complex fossils known anywhere. Two species are present: Charnia masoni, originally described from Charnwood Forest in central England and now known worldwide, may have ranged through as much as 30 m.y. of Ediacaran time, and C. wardi spo nov., a new species of Charnia that consists of slender fronds to nearly 2 m in length, is the longest Ediacaran fossil yet described anywhere. These fossils, which are present midway between the glacial diamictites of the Gaskiers Formation (ca. 595 Ma) and the classic Ediacaran assemblage of the Mistaken Point Formation (565 Â± 3 Ma) 1500 m higher in the same section, provide our first glimpse of complex megascopic life after the meltdown of the "snowball Earth" glaciers.

The snowball Earth hypothesis predicts that low-latitude glaciation lasted millions of years while CO2 built up to critical levels to culminate in catastrophic deglaciation in a supergreenhouse climate. The Gaskiers Formation of eastern Newfoundland (Canada) has been attributed to a snowball...

The article discusses research being done on the Neoproterozoic Snowball Earth. It references the study "The Survival of Benthic Macroscopic Phototrophs on a Neoproterozoic Snowball Earth," by Q. Ye et al. in the 2015 issue. Topics discussed include the fossil data used in identifying glacial...